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I'm just wondering how often people actually write and send letters via the mail anymore. When I was younger, I did it all the time, usually to my grandparents but not anymore. My grandfather died in 2005 and my grandmother is currently in the final stages of Alzheimer's so writing to her just wouldn't be the same. I should still do it, though...it would make her day.

Actually, I just caught myself in a lie as I wrote and mailed a two-page letter to someone who shall remain anonymous but is fairly prominent in the public eye. I must say, I truly enjoyed it as writing is one of my real passions. I used a gel pen and wrote in cursive, a talent that seems to befuddle my friends but something from which I obtain great personal satisfaction. I just love how it looks as it's so fluid and elegant, truly a lost art.

I wrote in longhand until fairly recently. What converted me from the pen to the keyboard was, quite simply, pain. My hand doesn't hurt as much from the motions of typing as it does from holding a pen and writing for extended periods of time. I will say, though, that in my heart I will always remain a writer, and not a typer.

My handwriting is terrible. I went to secretarial school in 1978 and have been typing ever since, and my handwriting just went downhill. I keep a handwritten journal, but I've gone back and read what I wrote a month or so later, and sometimes I can't even read it.

The problem, for me, with writing in cursive is that it takes so long. My hand can't keep up with the thoughts in my brain, whereas the opposite is true with typing.

I'm in my 20s and write to 2 friends semi-annually in cursive; we decided it's more personal than shooting off an email or text message, plus it's fun to get a hand written letter with a package of goodies from somewhere else in the country. I got the idea from my mother who has many friends who moved away after college, but they all stayed in touch by snail mail. Pictures are sent to each other via email.

It's so funny I learned cursive back in the day really easily. Never wrote in print since. All I write in is cursive. I try to print and it doesn't work. But I looove cursive, I don't know why. It is like another poster said, a lost art. And it's so elegant (when done right).

I enjoyed writing letters in cursive, and I corresponded with several people until about nine years ago.
Suddenly no one "had the time " to write any longer. They all had computers.So did I but I looked upon letter writing as a separate activity.
I am a writer, and I still write in longhand, then I transfer my writing to the computer. I never was much of a typist, and I dropped "Keyboarding for the College Bound", because it was ruining my average!
This is the way I think, write and create. It feels more organic to me. (and no, I am not elderly)
Anyone else feel the same way?

I occasionally do! I love hand-written letters, and I also love my own unique handwriting. But none of my friends or family does; in fact, most of them don't seem to even open their email. (But that's another gripe.)

It is definitely a dying art. Especially in a new age of not needing to know how to spell.

The good nuns at St. Elizabeth's Parochial School in East Baltimore taught us the Palmer Penmanship Method. I may have been learning to write in cursive at same time I was learning to speak in prose without knowing it.

Grades one thru eight in a Catholic grammar school down by Baltimore's inner harbor taught me most of the things I needed in life.
Same for my mom and dad. Except they spoke both Polish and German. Not me, I did not want to be an immigrant's child. My loss.

It depends on my mood, but I do think cursive is so much more personal and at times I get a lot of enjoyment from doing it. Sadly, I don't think it's appreciated by many anymore, though. I find there is a difference in content of what I write between a cursive letter and a typed letter.

Someone briefly mentioned email. I think that's what really put the nail in cursive writing's coffin, but now most people don't even communicate that way anymore and instead do nothing but forward jokes I've already read five times! I'd so love to hear from someone's heart, even if it's only a few lines whether it is by cursive writing or email, than get another dumb "forwarded" email.

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